Leithart
Should Protestants have excluded Catholics from the Lord’s table? James B. Jordan thinks not, and also tells some tales from the front of Reformational Catholicism. Read more
Should Protestants have excluded Catholics from the Lord’s table? James B. Jordan thinks not, and also tells some tales from the front of Reformational Catholicism. Read more
I appreciate Brad Littlejohn’s dispassionate report on our conversation about the future of Protestantism. I most appreciated his recognition that my argument rested on a reading of the biblical narrative. I learned from Jim Jordan long ago that the Bible presents a narrative of repeated creations, repeated deaths, repeated rebirths. Everyone sees it in the first chapters of Genesis: Creation, Adam’s fall, corruption of the earth, diluvian return to formless void, new creation with new Adam. But it doesn’t stop there.... Read more
Carl Trueman offers an irenic response to our conversation about the future at Protestantism last week. One key difference between us is this: Carl thinks that unity is a “desirable” goal. I think that’s far too weak a way to capture the New Testament’s teaching. Unity is an evangelical demand. It’s not much of an exaggeration to say it is the evangelical demand. When Paul discovered that Peter refused table fellowship with Gentiles, he didn’t say, “Come, Peter. Unity is desirable. Let’s hope... Read more
Theodore Jennings is death on forensic justification (Outlaw Justice, 62): “So-called forensic justification had God declaring people to be just who manifestly are not just., thereby vitiating the claim of justice itself.” This violates the whole thrust of Paul’s argument in Romans, Jennings thinks: “It would be difficult to imagine a more effective way to understand Paul’s whole concern and argument because Paul’s issue is precisely that of justice, of how justice has become injustice and how justice is to... Read more
John sees four living creatures in the midst of and around the Lord’s throne. They are the cherubim who form the throne (Revelation 4:6b-7). They are full of eyes, so they can look every which way as they guard the holiness of the Lord’s presence (v. 6b). But we never see them looking at anything. Instead, these eye-filled creatures speak and sing (4:8; 5:8-9). They guard not with their eyes but with their mouths. They guard by praise. It is... Read more
Klaus Wengst argues that the harlot city of Revelation can “only” be Rome (contribution to Politics and Theopolitics in the Bible and Postbiblical Literature, 191). He follows with all sorts of good reasons to doubt that conclusion. For starters, he point out the odd doubling: The beast on which the harlot rides is definitely Rome, so what are we to make of Rome riding on the back of Rome. “Can both things be understood in context with one another?” He tries... Read more
Tyler Mayfield’s monograph, Literary Structure and Setting in Ezekiel, focuses on the literary markers on the surface of the text of Ezekiel, rather than on conceptual or genre, as a guide for literary structure of the book. He argues that the book divides into 13 units, each of which begins with a narrative (sometimes no more than a chronological marker) followed by an oracle or series of oracles. For the most part, the units are in chronological order. The result is a... Read more
Reader David Gornoski writes: I had a lot of fun with the social construct theory professors. I say, Yes, Language does construct reality. “In the beginning was the Word.” God spoke and now we exist. And yes, reality is socially constructed. A society in one being, the Trinity created it. I took it further and said that is why even communication is trinitarian itself. 1st, 2nd and 3rd person. Without these, humans cannot have fully human reality. (Look at the... Read more
The challenge of the Middle East peace process is the problem of the disparity of power. Andrew Bacevich writes, “Between Israelis and Palestinians, the disparity of power looms large and not by accident. Even before founding their state, Zionists were intent on acquiring a surplus of power. By means both fair and foul, Israel succeeded in doing just that. Today it has a regionally dominant conventional army; nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them; and the world’s leading superpower in... Read more
Paul, writes Theodore Jennings in Outlaw Justice, “is concerned with the most basic issues of political thinking, law and justice” (3). Translations, though, often obscure this interest, minimizing the political dimensions of Paul’s vocabulary and arguments by turning his letters into “religious” teaching, teaching concerned primarily with the salvation of individual souls: “the political and philosophical character of Paul’s argument has receded from view. The result is that the text is read as a book of the church that concerns narrowly... Read more
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